Scissors which are used in a professional capacity, and most commonly by hair stylists, tend to be worn down by continued use and require frequent and accurate sharpening and shaping for proper operation. These shapes include bevelled cutting of the cutting edge, convex cutting of an upper surface of the scissor element to provide a "clamshell" edge and a hollow grind or inside edge. Most often the scissors are sharpened and shaped by specialists who have developed skills in accurately manually holding and manipulating the scissor parts relative to various grinding, shaping and polishing wheels (referred to collectively hereinafter as "sharpening" wheels) to provide the requisite shapes and sharpened edges. These skills are however only acquired over very long periods of time and practice. In addition, despite the acquired skills, the operations remain manual and subject to inconsistencies, though slight. Exactitude on a consistent level, not possible with manual manipulation, results in longer periods of time being required between sharpening.
Various fixtures and mechanical devices have been suggested for holding and manipulating scissors but they uniformly suffer from inability to permit proper manipulation for all the required steps involved in shaping and sharpening. Thus, many devices include mechanical clamps or fixtures for positioning scissor elements adjacent a grinding wheel with a fixed angle or with means for fixed angular adjustments. A concave edge is always formed using such devices. However, many scissors are sharpened with a bevelled knife edge or a rounded convex edge, and particularly scissors used by beauticians. This type of convex sharpening is not however possible with a grinder even those with mechanical clamps and fixtures. Sharpening must normally be performed in a factory, which involves starting with a forged blade shape and with the final blade shape being done in an automated grinding center, then polished and hand sharpened by a master craftsman.
Also in the past, single wheels have been fixtured relative to a clamped and fixtured scissor holding device. Accordingly, use of different wheels or even to allow for manual manipulation required constant changing of wheels or removal of scissors to different devices. These changes engendered problems of wear, wherein different wheels have different degrees of wear and thus different outer diameters. Accordingly the wheels must be dressed to match outer diameters.
In addition, many of the fixtures do not permit or provide an option for manual manipulation if desired.